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Panther, T-34 or Sherman - best design of the war?


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Well the Panzer II could hardly have done much worse at Arracourt!

It is interesting to note though that General Geyr von Schweppenburg, amongst others, considered the Panzer Division in 1944 to have around 30% of the combat effectiveness of the 1940-41 formation. Certainly the Panther loaded brigades at Arracourt failed to emulate the glory years! Whatever the capabilities of the Panther it failed to deliver the striking operational successes of the early war years. As the war progressed the Allies learnt how to counter the German tactical/operational systems. So whilst on paper the Sherman and T-34 may seem inferior they were intergrated into military systems which proved effective overall against the German armed forces.

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Is that you, Tom?

There was a lengthy debate on Armchair Generals recently, one that ran many pages, discussing the T-34.

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70722

Of course, it is one of many debates on this topic.

The T-34 was there from start to finish, sort of. The 1940 T-34 was so very different from the 1943 tank, which was again so different from the 1945 tank. It started out fancy, got crude and then just rude.

There's been a lot of information on the T-34 come out of Russia in the last three or four years, and it is remains one of the great untold stories of the war in English. It's not appreciated that virtually every part was reinvented in 1941-43, resulting in a Kalashnikov.

It started out as a deluxe weapon, but need forced the evolution to a tank that was cheap, effective and easy to build quickly, exactly the recipe needed at the time. It had its faults, and in some respects was certainly inferior to both the Sherman and the Panther, just as it excelled in others. That aside, the fact that T-34s could be built in such numbers give it quantity, "a quality of its own". That tips the scale for me.

Scott Fraser

Calgary

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Out of curiosity, comparing tactical level performance, why does the Panther (44.8 tons) get compared to the t-34 (32 tons) rather than the more equivalent IS-2 (46 tons)? (including the IS-3 as a essentially an IS-2 variant).

The Panther gets compared to the T-34 because they fulfilled the same doctrinal role. In theory, the Panther was to have filled out the panzer battalions in all of the German panzer divisions (like how the T-34 filled out the tank brigades in Soviet tank corps). The Stalin, however, was never intended to be a MBT that equipped all of the tank brigades. It was a breakthrough specialist, organized into Guards heavy tank regiments (similar to the independent Tiger battalions). That is why the Stalin is compared to the Tiger, rather than the Panther.

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